


in the interim

by protectoroffaeries



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: And Her Origin Story, Dreams, F/M, Gods and Champions, Liberaties Taken With the Raven Queen, Magic, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-21 02:14:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14906459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/protectoroffaeries/pseuds/protectoroffaeries
Summary: The Raven Queen has a talk with her Champion.





	in the interim

**Author's Note:**

> completely self-indulgent & lacking plot

The Matron of Ravens rests in the window of a temple that almost looks like the one Percival de Rolo made for her Champion in Whitestone. This one is slightly more refined, but slightly less real. She keeps the world outside the temple light and inviting, goes for spring even though her heart belongs to winter. Her Champion flinches from her, skirts around her, worries about what she will ask of him. Like a frightened bird. She doesn’t wish to spook him even more with barren trees and grey skies. 

She takes off her mask, sets it beside her, and does her best to recall what her face looked like when she was only mortal. She shortens her dark hair and lightens her red eyes until they’re a more agreeable gray, and she tries not to look infinite, but she has had echos of herself in every space for so long that she isn’t sure how successful she is at maintaining the illusion. Still, she tries to hold it as she waits for him. She embraces mortality in the way only she can. 

The sound of her Champion’s footsteps find her ears shortly. She listens to him shuffle his feet outside the doorway for a handful of seconds, the spring sunshine doing little to soothe the rapid beating of his heart, which she can also hear, though it’s not loud. She imagines his heart is all he can hear, roaring in his ears. Her Champion stops stalling after about a minute, and then he pushes open the door of the temple and steps inside. His eyes dart toward the ceiling and then toward the altar before he finds her in the window. 

She watches his eyes become guarded as he catches sight of her. His posture changes, back straightening. He stands with his hands clasped behind his back and bows his head, but he’s glancing at her from beneath his lashes. He reminds her of royal children of ages past, ones who have been told of duties and decorum, but don’t yet have the patience or the focus to fully achieve the control their parent execute effortlessly. It’s endearing. 

“My Lady,” he greets. 

“My Champion.”

She stands, bare feet against stone, and walks over to him. Her footsteps echo in the unnatural silence between them. In this form, she is shorter than him by half a head, and the realization brings a faint smile to her face. 

She places herself right in front of him, and he raises his chin a fraction. But then he accidentally makes eye contact, and his head drops. He keeps a distance between them that she has not experienced with any of his predecessors; even the most formal of them would defer to her. Perhaps it is, in fact, his own rebellion keeping his chin tucked by his collarbone.

She reaches up and ghosts her fingertips across his cheek. He is warmer than she’s been in millennia, and for a single, fleeting moment, she feels a weight within herself, a hint of disappointment that one day he will be as cold as she is. A memory flashes in her mind, one of icy fingers against her own cheek, back when her skin was still warm and her heart had the nerve to skip a beat. 

Her Champion tenses under her touch. The memory is lost. She pulls her hand away. “Look at me.”

She sees his hesitation in the way his eyes dart, the way his head stays down. His hair is loose, hanging in his face, helping obscure him, and she has the passing impulse to brush it away. But she restrains herself. He clearly does not enjoy her touch. “Why won’t you look at me, my Vax’ildan?”

His breath hitches, a small hiccup of a gasp, and he looks at her, eyes wide, childish behavior momentarily forgotten. She uses his name sparingly for many reasons. To get his attention is the most trivial.

“What do you want from me?” he asks hoarsely. 

“You will stand against a growing threat, one that challenges not only me, but the natural orders of fate and death,” she tells him, even though she knows that isn’t what he meant. “But that is not for today.”

“Then what-”

“Do you know the story of my ascension?”

She hears his boots scrape against the floor as he shifts his weight, but she keeps his gaze. He respects her enough to try and look her in the eye, although he’s not entirely successful. “Only that you overtook the god who reigned before you. I don’t know how or why or any details.” 

The word ‘overtook’ is a strong one. She overtook no one. He neglected his post, and she stepped in. “I was ambitious. I was foolish. I was much like you.”

“I’m not ambitious,” he says immediately.

“You killed an ancient dragon with a dagger,” she reminds him. “And then turned on another ancient dragon. That is the epitome of ambitious and foolish.” She used to be amused by his humility, but she sees now that it comes from a place doubt and self-deprecation rotting within him. She will not encourage it. 

Her Champion’s cheeks go red. “Right.” 

“I had a sister as well, when I was mortal. She was younger than me. I wanted to protect her. But she died young. I wanted to bring her back.” The Matron of Ravens does not remember her own mortal name, a side-effect of joining with power beyond the comprehension of the mortal mind, but she remembers Rosalinda, in pieces, in what she could salvage over the centuries. In shards of memory, she remembers a wide smile and a pair of dark eyes. “He ignored me.”

“So you challenged him?” asks her Champion, and now he is watching her, head cocked to the side. No tension. No childish games. Only curiosity.

“No.” She does not tell him the whole story. Of her obsession. Of her love. Of how she never found Rosalinda, of how she never looked after her ascension. It does not matter. 

Her Champion frowns. “I would’ve challenged you, if you’d taken Vex.”

“I would have destroyed you.” She was foolish once. But no longer.

She holds up a hand and almost laughs at how small it is. She hovers a hand over his armor and raises an eyebrow at him. 

It surprises her when he grabs her wrist and presses her hand to his breastplate. “Is there are a reason for this? Why I’m here? Why you’re telling me… half of a story? Why you’re so small?”

“You are afraid of me.” It is not a question.

He hesitates, but slowly, he starts to nod.

“Many people fear me. I have learned to accept this. Fear has its uses, even. But my Champion, you are my presence on the Material Plane. We are tethered. I need your faith to outweigh your fear.”

“I…” he thinks for a moment, “I don’t know if that’s possible. But I do have faith in you.”

“My Champion-”

“My Lady,” he interrupts, “your other Champions were afraid of you, too, weren’t they? Mortals who aren’t afraid of gods are idiots.” 

She does laugh at that, and although the sound is restrained and quiet, he jumps. It occurs to her that he’s never heard her laugh - because she can’t recall the last time she laughed. “But their fear did not overpower their faith.” 

He opens his mouth, but he says nothing. After blinking for a few seconds, he closes his mouth. 

She nudges her power through the palm of her hand and a purple glow outlines her fingers, shining against the black of his breastplate. Deathwalker’s Ward, as the mortals call her armor, thrums under her touch like a ‘hello’ from an old friend. The runes illuminate, and the wings stretch into existence until they’ve extended to their full span. Her Champion’s fingers tense around her wrist, but he does not try to remove her hand. 

Her energy fills the armor, and then it overflows, spilling into her Champion. His hair hovers above his shoulders, his eyes start to glow with the same deep purple filtering through the ruins, and shocks of magic dance across his veins, like sparks under the skin. 

“Your eyes are glowing,” he says, sounding apprehensive. 

“Yours are as well.”

“What are you doing to me?” 

“Showing you the power my other Champions have achieved.” She has never filtered through a mortal like this before. Not physically, with a touch of her hand. It was never necessary. But Vax’ildan has always been different from the others. 

“It’s not helping with the fear thing.” He stands straighter as she removes her hand, and his wings flap once to keep his balance. The glow fades from them both, but the heavy feeling of powerful magic still hangs in the air, crackling.

“I hear channeling it into awe helps.”

“Did you just make a joke?” 

“Vax’ildan, have you ever known me to joke?” 

That coaxes a smile out of him, albeit a small one. “No, I don’t think I have.” 


End file.
